The California legislature this week took a step that could have huge (likely positive) implications for urban transportation both locally and nationally: It passed a law requiring that Uber and Lyft classify drivers as employees — not as independent contractors, as the companies do now.

The decision to treat drivers as employees shakes up the business model of ride-share companies. But it also represents a potential boon to cities. If Uber and Lyft must pay drivers a living wage, congested major cities will also likely benefit from less congestion and fewer emissions.

Uber and Lyft traffic have exacted a huge toll on major U.S. cities. Some 70 percent of Uber and Lyft rides happen in just nine cities — San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., according to independent traffic analyst Bruce Schaller.

For example, there were 215 million Uber and Lyft trips in New York City in 2017, Schaller estimates, driving up congestion dramatically. For every driving-mile trip, Uber and Lyft have eliminated, another 2.6 miles of driving happened, as drivers spent time “deadheading” — cruising around without passengers between trips.

Uber and Lyft traffic has especially crushed San Francisco. The city estimates that Uber and Lyft rides constitute one in five vehicle trips taking place within city limits — adding about 6,000 vehicles a day to the streets at rush hour.

Last year New York City capped the number of ride-hail vehicles on the streets and increased the minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers to $17.22 an hour after expenses. As a result, this past spring Uber and Lyft stopped hiring new drivers.

In addition, Schaller said, New York City data showed the total number of Uber and Lyft trips didn’t decline, but the amount of time they spend “deadheading” — cruising without any paying passengers present — did.

Uber and Lyft have been in a heated competition for market share. And since the services they offer are essentially identical, they mainly compete on wait times.

But, judging from the New York example, having to pay drivers an hourly rate seems to discourage all that extra cruising.

The California law would entitle ride-share drivers to the state’s $12-an-hour minimum wage (San Francisco’s is $15.55) — and also require the company to provide benefits in some cases. Uber alone has two million registered employees nationally, although many are inactive. Its drivers reportedly earn an average of $9.22 an hour.

With characteristic disregard for local laws, Uber said that it won’t automatically reclassify its drivers as employees because drivers are — wait for it — not really their core business:

NEWS: Uber says it will not reclassify drivers as employees in the wake of landmark California law, despite the lack of ride-hail exemption in #AB5. Lead attorney argues Uber is exempt from requirements because “drivers’ work is outside the usual course of Uber’s business.”

]]>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/13/fridays-headlines-50/feed/1Talking Headways Podcast: Designing Ninja-Proof Seatshttps://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/talking-headways-podcast-designing-ninja-proof-seats/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/talking-headways-podcast-designing-ninja-proof-seats/#commentsThu, 12 Sep 2019 16:57:38 +0000http://usa.streetsblog.org/?p=193674This week, we’re joined by Lily Bernheimer of Space Works Consulting. Lily, a Streetsblog/Open Plans Alum, talks to us about her book “The Shaping of Us: How Every Day Spaces Structure our Lives, Behavior, and Well-Being.” She talks about her research in Environmental Psychology and how human beings have evolved in order to respond to our physical environment. Listen in to learn about ninja-proof seats, mystery-novel models of building, and more on biophilia and human connections to nature.

]]>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/talking-headways-podcast-designing-ninja-proof-seats/feed/2Indy Transit Leaping Ahead With New Bus Linehttps://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/indy-transit-leaping-ahead-with-new-bus-line/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/12/indy-transit-leaping-ahead-with-new-bus-line/#commentsThu, 12 Sep 2019 15:53:03 +0000http://usa.streetsblog.org/?p=193591A major leap forward for transit in Indianapolis and the city is celebrating. ]]>

Indianapolis residents were cheering as the city launched the Red Line, the first of three planned bus routes and the first fixed-route, high-frequency transit line established in two generations.

On Opening Day earlier this month, people woke up early in order to pack themselves onto the first few buses.

Vicki Mills, 66, and her husband, Mike, told the Indianapolis Star they were determined to be some of the first riders. They brought their bikes, the Star’s Kellie Hwang reported, because they wanted to learn how the bus’s two interior bike racks worked.

The $96.3 million, 13-mile project was funded after Marion County voters approved in a quarter-percent sale tax hike for transit in 2016. Now that the first line is operational, Indianapolis residents are getting their first taste of a high-quality transit line. And they are excited.

Indianapolis leaders have pushed forward a vision for better regional transit for a decade. Their efforts survived an assassination attempt by the GOP statehouse in 2014.

The Red Line is only the first of three bus rapid transit lines planned to span Marion County. The Purple Line and Blue Line are expected to open in 2022 and 2025, respectively.

By the time the region’s transit service makes all three lines operational and completes a systemwide bus-network redesign (expected next June), service will have increased by about 70 percent, said Jerome Horne, a spokesperson for Indygo, the regional transit agency.

Local leadership celebrated.

“In the time it took to cut a ribbon, Indianapolis became a different city,” Anna Gremling, executive director of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Indianapolis has a very low base of transit ridership. Only about 2 percent of the city’s workers were commuting by public transit in 2016, when the measure to fund the new bus services passed. By comparison, about 8 percent of workers ride transit in nearby Cincinnati and 18 percent in Pittsburgh.

“This is definitely a big step up,” said Horne. “Before we started this referendum process … we ranked like 86th out of the top 100 cities in the country in terms of transit revenue hours per capita.”

Horne said the full potential of the Red Line may not be realized until after the bus network redesign is complete in June. Ridership numbers for the first week varied from 5,000 to 10,000 daily.

Long term, the region hopes to have 11,000 daily riders on the line. Ridership on the Red Line cost nothing until the end of September.

But the number of new riders the system saw was still inspiring, Horne said.

“This project has been a great unifier,” he said. “Seeing people from all walks of life together in one space in Indianapolis is really cool.”

Horne said the transit agency has had some issues with bus bunching and meeting the 10 minute headways. The Red Line offers 10 minute frequencies 14 hours a day and 20-minute frequencies for another six hours. The 13-mile route runs are partly dedicated lanes, including a portion that has a single, bi-directional dedicated lane.

Looking at smartphones is the leading cause of pedestrian injuries, and other myths Treehugger debunks about walking while distracted.

Honolulu, New Orleans, Nashville, Chicago, Charlotte, New York, Portland, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the cities that could benefit most from more micromobility options like e-scooters because people take so many short trips by car, according to a new report. (TechRepublic)

Uber laid off 435 people this week, on the heels of another round of layoffs last month. (TechCrunch)

About 60,000 people rode Indianapolis’ Red Line bus rapid transit during its first week of operation — short of the goal of 11,000 per day. (Star)

Boston developers are increasingly eyeing surface parking lots as the city becomes less oriented around private automobiles. (Curbed)

A new study published by the National Academies of Science underscores the incredible power of low-cost, quick-build transit projects — what boosters call “tactical urbanism.”

A review of 20 bus- and streetcar-related “tactical urbanism” projects, such as temporary dedicated bus lanes or temporary “bus bulbs,” found that they speed journeys, improve safety and raise ridership to a surprising degree.

The projects — including the Hennepin Avenue Bus Lane in Minneapolis, the King Street (streetcar) Pilot in Toronto, and New York’s experiments with temporary “floating” bus-stop islands — cost less than $300,000 and were completed with temporary materials in a short time.

Nevertheless, they had big benefits. The review found that temporary bus lanes and other pilots aimed at speeding bus and streetcar trips reduced journey times for riders from 20 to 50 percent.

Meanwhile, projects that were aimed at improving safety — through road diets or bus lanes — led to a 40 to 65 percent reduction in collisions. These projects also boosted transit ridership up to 17 percent, and were overwhelmingly popular with riders, the study found.

For example, during Chicago Transit Authority’s experiment with pre-paid transit tickets, 90 percent of riders on the Red Line and Loop Link said they liked the pilot. On the Blue line, 77 percent of riders said they thought it sped up boarding.

Many projects also had unintended, spin-off benefits. Miami’s 2017 “Streets for People” project, which added temporary bus and bike lanes, sped up rush-hour journeys for drivers by 19 percent. Toronto’s King Street Pilot — which removed car-through traffic from an important streetcar route in order to speed up service — increased biking along the corridor an amazing 440 percent.

“Typical transit projects can cost millions of dollars and take decades to come to fruition,” said author Tony Garcia in a statement. “With a quick-build approach to transit, you can deliver transit service immediately, while longer-term planning takes place. For many of these projects, if the pilot had not been implemented, city residents might still be waiting for these improvements.”

Of the projects studied, city and transit officials planned to make the changes permanent in 77 percent of the cases.

The research was conducted for the Transportation Research Board by survey with 36 people involved with the projects, from city and transit agency officials to the nonprofit and advocacy groups that often served as partners and initiators.

The authors had some advice for cities taking on tactical urbanism projects. For one, don’t be too quick to disassemble a tactical urbanism project if the initial feedback isn’t good; it takes time for traffic and riders to adjust to changes. Often, it takes six months, at least, to get a good read on whether a project is working, but it can take a year or more.

Also, if an element of a project isn’t working, change it. It’s an experiment — go with it! Tactical-urbanism projects can be adjusted, tested and rejected or accepted based on outcomes.

New York City transit workers are still fighting for recognition for their role in rescuing survivors and cleaning up in the aftermath of 9/11. (Spectrum News)

Biking deaths are up 25 percent since 2010 and 10 percent since last year as all other traffic fatalities fell, mainly due to a lack of protected bike lanes in most urban areas. (Vice)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan wants to cut $345 million from the state transit budget over the next six years. The agency is already facing a $2 billion shortfall over the next decade. The state now has no plans for new transit projects after the Purple Line in the Washington, D.C. suburbs is completed. (Baltimore Sun)

The California labor bill aimed at helping “gig workers” like Uber and Lyft drivers is on the verge of passing. (New York Times)

Too many cycling deaths — primarily in the black community — go unnoticed, and New Orleans can do more to protect people on bikes. (Grist)

The local DOT is studying extending the D.C. streetcar two miles to the east (Curbed). With Kansas City also extending its streetcar line, should Cincinnati consider following suit? (WCPO) Seattle is going the opposite way, canceling a $52 million contract to buy new streetcars (MyNorthwest)

DUIs have dropped in Austin since Uber and Lyft came to town, but it’s unclear how much ride-hailing services have to do with the decline. (KUT)

Wichita is well behind peer cities like Omaha, Oklahoma City and Tulsa in transit spending. (Eagle)

Atlanta is putting another $2.7 million into improving MLK Drive, one of its most harrowing streets. (Curbed)

Privacy concerns have Toronto residents souring on Google’s “smart neighborhood,” Quayside, which will feature tunnels for delivery vehicles and heated LED-lit sidewalks, but also collect lots of data. (Fast Company)

With ride-hailing, e-scooters and driverless vehicles all promising to transform transportation, a ride on a coal-powered locomotive in Nevada is a reminder of when railroads really did change everything. (City Lab)

Urban transportation experts are trying to get ahead of the introduction of driverless cars — knowing that, if don’t do so, they run the risk of ceding policymaking to automobile engineers and executives.

Toward that end, they’re turning the coming of autonomous vehicles into an occasion to correct many 20th-century planning mistakes: “putting people at the center of urban life and street design, while taking advantage of new technologies in order to reduce carbon emissions, decrease traffic fatalities, and increase economic opportunities,” according to a new manual from the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

“We realized autonomous vehicles are a really good opportunity for cities to reset some of the negative planning decisions we’ve made in the past,” NACTO spokesman Alex Engel told Streetsblog from the group’s annual conference in Toronto. “If you make the street design changes now, you’re ensuring that AV technology adapts to streets that we have and want to have — as opposed to adapting our streets to the technology.”

The 81-city coalition this week released a Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, which builds on a prior report by offering policies on transit, congestion pricing, transportation data, shipping, and safety that prioritize people over vehicles.

“In the face of uncertainty, cities must leverage all their tools to reshape their streets now in ways that prioritize people and high-efficiency transit,” the 132-page blueprint said. “Physically changing streets today to reduce speeds, encourage bus ridership, walking, and cycling, and create a more welcoming urban realm will increase the likelihood that AVs will be developed as a force for good.”

Those key policy recommendations include:

Improving transit service and redesign bus and rail networks, especially along high-traffic corridors, in order to accommodate growth without congestion.

Incorporating autonomous-vehicle technology to pilot trains and buses and handle fare collection for more efficient transit.

Developing congestion-pricing plans — either to enter specific city zones, park or idle at a curb, use a ride-hail service, or drive through a tolled highway — directing the revenue for transit, walking and biking.

Cataloguing AV data for use in updating street infrastructure and communicating changes to road use and traffic, while protecting user privacy.

Regulating the freight industry to downsize its vehicles for city streets, encourage off-peak delivery and coordinating package and mail delivery based on destination, not the carrier.

Perhaps most important, the blueprint emphasizes redesigning streets with pedestrians and cyclists in mind, by lowering speeds, putting roads on “diets,” widening intersections, and adding plazas — all of which would force vehicles with or without drivers to respect other modes of travel.

That stands in contrast to some wacky ideas floated by automobile executives and driver-friendly designers, such as sidewalk gates that pen in pedestrians at crossings and barcode jackets that cyclists can wear that autonomous cars would detect and avoid.

But if autonomous vehicle technologies can’t be made to see people and objects of all shapes and sizes in any kind of weather, then they cannot safely operate on the road, the report asserted.

“Those cars have to be able to identify a kid running down a street to collect a ball hit onto the street,” Engel said. “The technology is not ready if they have to rely on someone else wearing a device. They have to detect pedestrians and not require that they be connected to them.”

Transportation experts think that their proposals for better street design and land use will ensure a safer, more people-focused future for urban areas — regardless of when driverless cars enter city corridors.

“Simple, physical changes to street geometry can have huge impacts on safety and how people choose to travel,” the blueprint said. “By redesigning their streets, cities and people will shape technology policy for decades to come.”

America’s late-shift workers are wasting their wages on car costs or ride-share services because public transit in their cities isn’t running overnight, a new study shows.

The American Public Transportation Association wanted to understand how a lack of transit has shortchanged some of the most vulnerable workers in the workforce. They found that late-shift workers are 40 percent less likely than 9-to-5 workers to use mass transit to commute to their jobs.

Instead, these workers must pay through their teeth to have a car in their household.

“These people don’t make very much money,”APTA Director of Policy Development and Research Darnell Grisby told Streetsblog. “Housing is biggest cost households have followed by transportation. If you combine this with the affordability crisis with housing we’re putting a lot of pressure on these families. They essentially have no money left.”

Owning a car can cost $737 per month or upward of $8,849 annually, according to a 2018 AAA estimate. That’s 31 percent of their income toward operating a vehicle; costs climb to 42 percent if they’re leasing a vehicle, the study found. Mass transit by comparison only costs an average of $77 per month, or a mere 3 percent of their income, the study found.

The problem affects a large number of people. One in four Americans gets paid for work they do between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., and 17 percent of workers in the country’s major metropolitan areas report to their jobs between 4 p.m. and 6 a.m., American Community Survey data shows.

They’re also predominantly black and Latino. People of color represent 52 percent of late-night workers who are on the job from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. — compared with only 39 percent of the daytime workforce and 45 percent of evening and early morning shifts.

Late-shift workers generate $812.6 billion in annual wages and are employed by some of the fastest growing industries in the country, including food services, entertainment, health care, and administrative and support services. Yet, for their extraordinary efforts, they earn $5,000 less than their daytime peers. That amounts to an average salary of $30,000 per year, or about $375 per month, the study found.

Because train and bus systems typically do not run on a 24-hour schedule, these workers must make difficult choices — dip into their paychecks to buy or lease a car or endure hellish commute times.

Few rely on buses and trains. Only 3.8 percent of third-shift workers who are on the job between 4 p.m. and 6 a.m. took public transit — compared with 6.5 percent of daytime workers. Late-shift straphangers took an average of 48 minutes to get to their jobs. Those at work between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. had public transit commutes as long as 53 minutes — while a car would slice their commute in half, the study found.

Solutions to making transit more accessible vary by locality — but extending the hours of subway, light rail, and bus service is a good first step.

The APTA also would like to see more late-night transit pilot programs, dedicated overnight bus routes that mirror daytime routes, and public-private partnerships with ride share companies and companies who employ third-shift workers to invest in on demand services.

Federal and state investment in infrastructure would help, too. It could cost $90 billion to $100 billion to bring the nation’s transit system to a “state of good repair” and much of that work is done on nights and weekends.

“It’s part of an ongoing conversation the nation is having for inequality, how do we present the best opportunity for people to advance and have a shot at the American Dream,” Grisby said. “The lack of public transportation funding is an impediment to their advancement.”

Democratic presidential candidates have no real plan for dealing with the single largest source of pollution in the U.S.: cars. In fact, infrastructure construction could incentivize even more driving. (Mother Jones)

Outside’s Bike Snob, Eben Weiss, writes that forcing cyclists to wear helmets — as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to do — just discourages people from riding bikes, which actually makes bike riding even more dangerous because it reduces the “safety in numbers” effect.

Portland’s TriMet wants to trim a $400 million budget shortfall for the Barbour light rail project by eliminating stops along the 12-mile route. (Oregonian)

Hit-and-run drivers have killed 20 people in Denver so far this year, and fewer than half have been arrested. (Westword)

Des Moines prepares for the arrival of hundreds of e-scooters (Register). And New Orleans has approved regulations on pedal-assist bikes, paving the way for e-bikes to join the city bike-share network. (Advocate)

A San Antonio woman who was nearly killed by a driver while biking last year organized a “Cyclist Lives Matter” ride to memorialize other victims and call for safer streets (Rivard Report). Meanwhile, Pittsburgh cyclists were out in force last weekend trying to get a state law changed so that the city can build more protected bike lanes (Post-Gazette)

]]>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/10/tuesdays-headlines-51/feed/1Traffic Study Comes Under Fire for Being Too ‘Pro-Car’https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/09/landmark-traffic-study-comes-under-fire-for-being-too-pro-car/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/09/landmark-traffic-study-comes-under-fire-for-being-too-pro-car/#commentsMon, 09 Sep 2019 22:14:32 +0000http://usa.streetsblog.org/?p=193505A landmark report that analyzes traffic congestion and its costs is coming under fire from transportation experts who say its methodology and findings are biased toward cars. The Urban Mobility Report “is a throwback to an earlier age” that “reflects an outdated transport planning paradigm which assumed that ‘transportation’ means automobile travel and ‘transportation problem’ […]]]>

A landmark report that analyzes traffic congestion and its costs is coming under fire from transportation experts who say its methodology and findings are biased toward cars.

The Urban Mobility Report “is a throwback to an earlier age” that “reflects an outdated transport planning paradigm which assumed that ‘transportation’ means automobile travel and ‘transportation problem’ means traffic delay,” wrote Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, a Canadian organization.

This pro-car bias, according to Litman, means that the UMR, published by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, promotes highway expansion at the expense of other transportation solutions. The latest iteration of the UMR was published in August.

“Since planning decisions often involve trade-offs between congestion reductions and other objectives, these practices tend to overvalue roadway expansions and undervalue other congestion-reduction strategies, resulting in a transport system that is more automobile-dependent, costly, dangerous and polluting than residents want,” Litman wrote.

Moreover, because decision-makers and journalists around the country depend on the UMR as a baseline for their analyses, the report’s pro-car biases “can skew planning decisions to underinvest in other goals such as safety, affordability or independent mobility for non-drivers,” Litman argued.

Litman and others, such as Bruce Schaller in CityLab, Daniel Herriges in Strong Towns, Joe Cortright in City Observatory, and David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington, criticized the UMR for overestimating the cost of congestion, omitting the effects of “induced demand” (i.e., how highways incentivize people to drive on them), and ignoring commuters who don’t rely on automobiles to get to work.

UMR’s authors defended their conclusions.

“Almost every solution strategy works somewhere in some situation and almost every strategy is the wrong treatment in some places and times,” the study’s authors, Tim Lomax, David Schrank, Bill Eisele, write in the 2019 Urban Mobility Report. “Anyone who tells you there is a single solution that can solve congestion, be supported and implemented everywhere (or even in most locations) is exaggerating the effect of their idea.”

Whatever the controversy, the mainstream media jumped at the report’s finding, such as that the average driver sat in traffic for 54 hours in 2017 — a 26 percent rise over the past 10 years — while commuters in the 15 most congested cities sat behind their wheels for 83 extra hours that year.

The report’s ranking of major cities’ congestion woes also received attention. Traffic-plagued Los Angeles topped their list with the country’s worst rush-hour commuter delays in 2017 with drivers frittering away 119 hours in gridlock; followed by San Francisco-Oakland with 103 hours; Washington, D.C., (102 hours); greater New York (92 hours), and San Jose (81 hours).

Yet even those figures are flawed. It ranked compact, transit-friendly cities like Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., as having worst congestion than sprawling, car-dependent metropolises like Atlanta, Houston, and Miami, even though drivers might spend less time in bumper-to-bumper traffic but more hours speeding down endless freeways for their commute.

Schaller argues in City Lab that commuters are not actually spending more time getting to work because jobs are coming to suburbs where people live. According to Census data he analyzed, average commutes have grown over the past decade by less than 10 percent, with most travel times only one or two minutes longer. Schaller recommends building denser cities, with work concentrated in downtown commercial districts and new housing built nearby.

So what is there to take away from a misleading traffic study?

The authors do recommend some progressive policy solutions, such as making public transit systems more efficient, staggering commuting times, and encouraging mixed-use development in neighborhoods to make them more walkable.

But many of their recommendations, such as programming traffic signals to give motorists a string of green lights, fielding more Artificial Intelligence-driven cars, and widening streets and highways, will get a thumbs-down from safe-streets activists.

The board of metro Atlanta’s new regional transit agency has named Chris Tomlinson, who already heads two state transportation agencies, as its first executive director. His main task will be overseeing the creation of a regional transit plan. (AJC)

Seattle students are supposed to be able to ride buses and light rail for free, but Sound Transit was still asking them for proof of fare on the first day of school. (KIRO)

A $3.7 million federal grant will help bring New Orleans’ Union Passenger Terminal up to ADA standards. (Advocate)

Des Moines is preparing for the arrival of hundreds of e-scooters (Register)

If you park illegally in Washington, D.C., you might find yourself not only paying a ticket, but going viral. (City Paper)

]]>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/09/mondays-headlines-49/feed/1Seattle May Try to Replicate Barcelona’s ‘Superblocks’https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/06/seattle-may-try-to-replicate-barcelonas-superblocks/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/06/seattle-may-try-to-replicate-barcelonas-superblocks/#commentsFri, 06 Sep 2019 15:52:13 +0000http://usa.streetsblog.org/?p=193538A City Councilwoman wants to turn a six-block area of Capitol Hill into a low-traffic biking and pedestrian zone. ]]>

A Seattle council member is proposing that a six-block area of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood be transformed into a Barcelona-style “Superille” or “Superblock.”

These clusters of blocks — in which car traffic is mostly curtailed — have become hugely popular in the Spanish city, transforming residential districts by creating walkable, child-friendly neighborhoods with welcoming public spaces.

Council Member Teresa Mosqueda thinks that superblocks would work well in her district, so she is urging that Seattle pilot the model in a six-block area of Capitol Hill between between Pine and Union between 12th and Broadway. Vehicle traffic would be routed around the area, sparing residents living on the interior blocks the noise, pollution and danger of interaction with traffic.

Mosqueda said she would take up the idea after the election in November, when she hopes it will receive the support it needs in the council, Margo Vansynghel at Capitol Hill Blog reported.

Of course, Seattle, a national leader on street design, is already experimenting with a similar idea. The city calls its experiment “home zones.” It is offering $350,000 in grants for neighborhoods that want to try traffic calming within “a grid of arterial streets.”

By all accounts, the Superilles experiment in Barcelona has been a huge success, as David Roberts at Vox has detailed. On some of the city’s earliest Superblocks, bike trips rose by 30 percent and walking jumped 10 percent. The blocks make urban life quieter and more peaceful and sociable by creating a space for gathering and play, as the photo above shows.

Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg support improving intercity passenger rail, and Elizabeth Warren wants carbon-free cars and trucks, but overall the candidates said little about transportation at a marathon town hall on climate change. (CNN)

Congestion is increasing, but commute times stay the same. Because sprawl begets sprawl, and jobs follow workers out to the suburbs — which leads to shorter commutes, but more time spent sitting in traffic. (City Lab)

Uber has spent half a billion dollars trying to repair its image. Will it work? (Vox)

E-bike sales are up 60 percent this year, and they’re especially popular among seniors. (Considerable)

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ plan to boost Memphis transit funding by $10 million annually centers around a proposal to charge households that have more than two vehicles $145 a year for each additional vehicle. (Commercial Appeal)

Even constituents in Phoenix’s most staunchly anti-transit city councilman’s district voted in favor of light rail last week. (New Times)

London is changing its regs for skyscraper design to reduce headwinds for cyclists and pedestrians. (Wired)

The Republican Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives is using his authority to try to help ensure metro Tampa remains one of America’s most dangerous places to walk or bike.

Rep. José Oliva is asking the state’s Supreme Court to overturn the will of Hillsborough County voters, who last fall voted decisively to tax themselves to pay for transit upgrades and road-safety projects, like sidewalks and trails.

The one-cent sales-tax hike, which will raise $276 million — about half of which will be dedicated to transit — was approved by 57 percent of voters.

But, almost immediately, opponents began attacking the measure in court. Now Oliva has used his legal authority as Speaker of the House to file a brief in support of a lawsuit that seeks to overturn it.

A lower court upheld the constitutionality of the referendum in June, but did strike one passage. But opponents — including Hillsborough County Commissioner Stacy White — are still not satisfied and are appealing to the Supreme Court.

“The Florida House wants to take away freedom it granted to citizens because it disagrees with how citizens used it — to invest in safer roads and transit options,” said Tyler Hudson, a member of the grassroots All for Transportation campaign that introduced the ballot measure. “This is a thinly disguised attempt at a political do-over masquerading as a legal brief.”

And, in case you were wondering, yes, there appears to be a Koch Brothers connection. The Florida Chapter of Americans for Prosperity — a political arm of the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles Koch (and his late brother, David) — unsuccessfully attempted to oppose the ballot measure.

Oliva is a known supporter of the Kochs who attended a three-day retreat with them in Colorado Springs in 2017, according to Sunshine State News. He was a speaker at an Americans for Prosperty summit in Ohio 2015.

]]>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/05/florida-gop-trying-to-kill-transportation-measure/feed/3Talking Headways Podcast: New Thinking on Economic Development Investmentshttps://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/05/talking-headways-podcast-new-thinking-on-economic-development-investments/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/05/talking-headways-podcast-new-thinking-on-economic-development-investments/#respondThu, 05 Sep 2019 18:19:15 +0000http://usa.streetsblog.org/?p=193557This week on the podcast we’re joined by Adie Tomer a fellow at The Brookings Institution and Noah Siegel, Interim Deputy Director at the Portland Bureau of Transportation to talk about their new collaboration on a project called the Economic Value Atlas. The EVA is a new data and mapping tool developed to think about […]]]>

This week on the podcast we’re joined by Adie Tomer a fellow at The Brookings Institution and Noah Siegel, Interim Deputy Director at the Portland Bureau of Transportation to talk about their new collaboration on a project called the Economic Value Atlas. The EVA is a new data and mapping tool developed to think about regional investments in a more coordinated way, pulling away from the race to the bottom of incentive based economic development.

]]>https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/05/talking-headways-podcast-new-thinking-on-economic-development-investments/feed/0Democrats’ Climate Plans Lack Vision for City Transithttps://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/04/democrats-climate-plans-lack-vision-for-urban-transportation/
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/04/democrats-climate-plans-lack-vision-for-urban-transportation/#commentsWed, 04 Sep 2019 20:02:39 +0000http://usa.streetsblog.org/?p=193521So far, no one has seriously grappled with how to help free Americans from over-dependence on driving. ]]>

The Democratic presidential candidates are racing to release their climate proposals ahead of Wednesday night’s primary debate. But we’ve yet to see a candidate come forward with a really compelling vision for addressing America’s unhealthy relationship with cars.

Senator Elizabeth Warren today unveiled her climate plan, borrowed largely from that of Washington Governor Jay Inslee. But even Warren (known for her wonkiness) and Inslee (for his climate zeal) stopped short of reimagining how our cities and suburbs could function in a way that gives residents alternatives to driving for every trip.

Warren’s plan, like that of Senator Bernie Sanders, which was released last month, focuses a great deal on converting the vehicle fleet to run on electricity. Swapping out gas tanks for batteries will be an important part of lessening carbon emissions from American transportation, and will be expensive. Warren says she wants to make all new vehicles electric by 2030 — and the electric grid 100 percent renewable by 2035.

But Warren’s Medium post outlining the plan doesn’t mention walking or biking — and she only briefly mentions wanting to “expand and improve public transit across our country.”

What’s missing?

The gaps and omissions are worrying.

Even when the Democrats’ plans devote paragraphs on making American infrastructure more climate resilient, they don’t mention sidewalks — or the appalling lack thereof. They don’t mention bus shelters, or the squalid conditions in which bus riders are forced to wait in America. These are key ways that American infrastructure is not up to the challenges of our era.

Jay Inslee’s “Freedom from Fossil Fuels” plan, for example, makes zero references to: buses, cities, transit, land use or trains (except to use the phrase “gravy train.”) Bernie Sanders’ plan, while being extremely ambitious in a lot of ways, even proposed billions in spending that could be used to widen highways.

Sadly it is missing transportation policy. Getting everyone electric cars is not helpful when people will be shackled to them more every year. We need policy that shortens and shares trips. That is not only good for the environment, but for the economy and is more equitable. https://t.co/5Q0vZBeb2j

To be fair, Inslee’s climate plans (he has six, totaling 218 pages) go into more detail about reducing car use. His “Evergreen Economy for America” plan calls for doubling public-transit spending. It also calls for providing local, state and tribal governments with “much-needed resources to invest in expanding public transit and connecting people in communities through safe, multi-modal transportation options” and for expanding federal incentives for affordable, transit-oriented development and regional land-use planning.

The plan says this “includes local transportation plans that promote biking, walking and micro-mobility, such as electric scooters and e-bikes.”

So at least biking and walking get a good solid paragraph that says the right things.

Reducing car use

Kamala Harris, meanwhile, deserves credit for explicitly pointing out that we need to reduce car use — something the other candidates sidestep.

“We must also incentivize people to reduce car usage and use public transit. This starts by funding robust public transportation networks to bring communities together and focusing our transportation infrastructure investments toward projects that reduce vehicle miles traveled and address gaps in first mile, last mile service.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says Americans must reduce their driving trips by about 20 percent and electrify the fleet in order avoid the worst effects of climate change.

But Harris’s outline doesn’t emphasize ways of reducing driving — for example, zoning changes — to the same extent it does other goals, such as creating and preserving jobs or constructing green buildings.

Perhaps the subject will come up during the debate — but, more likely, it won’t.

That’s a shame, because a large federal spending program like these Democratic proposals provide an excellent opportunity to rethink the systems that have helped make transportation the country’s largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions. Investment in amenities such as better sidewalks, more bus-service hours, and thoughtful rezonings, could not only help save the planet — it also could promote public health and make our country more equal.

Other cities are considering following New York’s lead in regulating Uber and Lyft by limiting the number of drivers and the amount of time they can spend cruising without a passenger. (NY Daily News)

A lawsuit headed to the Washington state Supreme Court next week over car-tab fees could save drivers a few bucks, but cost Sound Transit billions. (Seattle Times)

Charlotte is rezoning 2,000 acres along light-rail lines to encourage walkable transit-oriented development (Observer). And a new light rail line into south Charlotte is moving forward (WSOC).

As Milwaukee bus drivers continue contentious contract negotiations with the county, the county’s chief executive is asking them to set aside their differences so they can seek more funding from the state. (Wisconsin Public Radio)

The Red Line is great, but Central Indiana needs a true regional transit system. (Indianapolis Star)

Safe-streets activists in Portland are furious that the supposedly pedestrian-friendly city has installed some 150 “No Crossing” signs and metal barriers at intersections around the city, which have been increasingly prevalent.

“It’s almost like they’re making us trespassers on our own crosswalk,” Portland attorney Ray Thomas told Bike Portland, adding that traffic officials are “infringing upon our right to roam, to be in the public way.”

The anti-crossing signs have proliferated in recent weeks as Portland grapples with an alarming spike of traffic fatalities this year. There have been 36 traffic fatalities in Portland through the end of August, which is already more than the total number of traffic deaths last year, according to Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, which acknowledged that the figure is “very high.”

State transportation officials, who have installed barriers on state-owned streets, consider the structures to be a useful tool to limit crashes between vehicles and pedestrians. Structures are bring installed to shift pedestrians “onto nearby and more appropriate crossings” and away from areas in the middle of a road where their “vision may be bad, line of sight may be difficult, and there may be a better crosswalk nearby, State DOT spokesman Don Hamilton told Streetsblog.

“We’re looking at individual circumstances at individual location,” Hamilton said. “We’re tying to look at whether this is the best option in each case. We’re using our good judgment about what’s appropriate there.”

But national pedestrian safety advocates say the barriers are misguided and do not represent best practices. Transportation agencies must prioritize pedestrians when designing streets — including lowering speed limits, adding traffic signals, installing speed cameras and stop signs, and marking pavement with wider crossing lines to give visual cues to motorists and cyclists that pedestrians use roads, too.

“It’s got to be a multifaceted approach and they must evaluate speed limits on these road ways,” National Safety Council government relations senior director Jane Terry told Streetsblog. “Lower speeds in an area where you have a lot of vulnerable users really mean the difference between life and death.”

The signs and barriers have alarmed transit advocates and personal-injury attorneys, who say that the transit agencies are favoring vehicular traffic over pedestrians and restricting pedestrian movement unnecessarily. The presence of the anti-crossing sign also eliminates a pedestrian’s right-of-way at the crossing — likely insulating the city from legal responsibility if a car injured or killed someone at the site, attorneys said.

It also may also be cheaper for the city to close an intersection instead of installing curb cuts to make streets more compliant for people with disabilities, especially after the city agreed to a $113 million settlement last September to fix or install 18,000 curb ramps during the next 12 years.

Traffic collisions have not let up. On June 13, a car struck and killed 82-year-old Louanna Battams in an unmarked crosswalk, the same day the city had celebrated safety improvements on the road she was crossing. The city barred the intersection to pedestrians several weeks later, although city officials said the installation had been in the works before the fatality. But pedestrians can walk around the barrier and cross anyway.

The blocking of crossings is continuing apace. State Traffic Roadway Engineer Mike Kimlinger, one of two state officials who can unilaterally close a crosswalk, said he’s been closing about two a month.

Even cutting back driving by 10 percent would have a big impact on climate change — the equivalent of taking 28 coal-fired power plants offline if every American did it. (New York Times)

Fresh off the defeat of Prop 105, which would have canceled plans for future light-rail expansion, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego is floating an extension of a half-penny sales tax for rail and other transportation projects. (AZ Family)

Could Milwaukee be the next target of a Koch-funded attack on transit? (Independent)

Warning of a “scooternado,” Miami ordered thousands of dockless e-scooters secured as Hurricane Dorian approached to prevent them from becoming dangerous projectiles flung around by 130 miles-per-hour winds. (Reuters)

The city taking over Cincinnati’s troubled streetcar would cost over $550,000. (WCPO)

Cedar Rapids’ bike-share program is adding scooters (KCRG). Concerns about Gotcha’s plans to bring 250 e-bikes to Flagstaff prompted the city council to immediately reverse its decision to award the company a contract (Arizona Daily Sun). Trump’s tariffs and tech problems have delayed the deployment of e-bikes in Sacramento suburbs (Bee).

Bethesda residents are worried about a “crosswalk to nowhere” that dead-ends at a construction site. (WJLA)